Twigs in the city

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens have just turned 100! In celebration there is an installation of giant twig sculptures! Patrick Dougherty, from North Carolina creates large scale sculptures with all the materials collected from what he finds on the premises. The sculptures look like giant birds nests connected together creating little, well large, huts almost house like. His work changes with the natural cycle, sticks settling, and eventually returning to the earth where they came from. The work will be up for a year so people can see it changing throughout the seasons and evolving.

Dougherty started making sculptures in 1980 with single pieces in his backyard but since then has created over 200 pieces for institutions and galleries.

Food or Art?

Food and art seem to go side by side.... when art is shown, there is normally food around. When one is eating there is normally some sort of art present. But what seemed to be even more interesting is the idea that food is art and art is food.

Michel Richard, is a very prominent chef and happens to be part of my extended family. He owns many restaurants and has written multiple cook books (one of them with my uncle.)

So what makes Richard different from other french chefs? Not only is his food amazing but the presentation is what really makes him stand apart. The interesting combinations of ingredients that one would not normally pair together create the mouth watering dishes served at Citronelle in Washington D.C.

Richard is most famously known for the pastries he makes. During the Holiday seasons he even has meringue shaped like a snowman, three tiers of sugar and delicious cream tied together with a rosemary branch in his arm. Although that is just naming one of the amazing desserts Richard has come up with his talents never seem to surprise me.

Food and art are closely related although it is never really looked at in this way. Many Chef's have been recently spending more time on presentation. Have you ever noticed that in

cookbooks the food always looks amazing but then when you make it at home it does not turn out looking as good? You have to spend as much effort on the presentation as you do on the meal itself! Food IS art and art IS edible as Michel Richard has proven to us!

Woodstock Film Festival!

Over the weekend i went to Woodstock, in Upstate New York, a place that is known for hippies, drugs, and the famous music festival but is actually nothing like that at all! The Woodstock Film Festival happened to be going on this past week as well so i was lucky to get to see part of that. The small town hosted the festival on Tinker Street, the main street, and showed most of the films at the Bearsville Theatre. The theatre looks out to a beautiful stream and a path that leads to the woods with benches for people to sit. Woodstock Radio is in a building on the same property as is the Bear Cafe, and Little Bear, a Chinese restaurant. Although all of the films were made independently and with very small budgets, the crowds that come out to see the films are anything but small!

http://www.woodstockfilmfestival.com/

http://www.bearcafe.com/

http://wdst.com/

THIS NEEDS TO END!

This is shocking, upsetting, disturbing, and needs to stop. The amount of teenagers committing suicide is astonishing but what is more outrageous is the lack of acceptance from fellow peers. In the past 3 weeks there have now been 6 young boys have killed themselves from extreme bullying over their sexuality. This is so disturbing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8038794/Tyler-Clementi-empty-seat-at-suicide-students-orchestra-debut.html

This is a blog post and video that speaks out against the devastation from Ellen DeGeneres
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/01/celebs-speak-out-on-teen-suicides/

http://business.tds.net/news/read.php?ps=1011&rip_id=%3CD9IJ1E980%40news.ap.org%3E&_LT=HOME_LARSDCCLM_UNEWS

http://perezhilton.com/2010-10-01-5th-and-6th-teen-suicide-this-week-action-must-be-taken

A nod to Hip Hop history

http://www.spreadit.org/jimmy-fallon-history-of-rap-justin-timberlake-video/
-- In under 5 minutes Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake summed up the history of hip hop! This is genius. Timberlake has a new movie coming out "The Social Network" and was on Fallon to promote it. In these short 5 minutes they go through everything from Rappers Delight to Empire State of Mind. I personally think they should do this for the history of all music genres. Fallon and Timberlake singing the tune of Bach, could you imagine?

http://www.mtv.co.uk/artists/justin-timberlake/news/239183-justin-timberlake-quitting-music-for-good
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2010/10/justin-timberlake-jimmy-fallon-and-the-history-of-rap.html
http://www.hiphoprx.com/2010/10/01/justin-timberlake-stars-in-the-social-network-jimmy-fallon-rap-hip-hop-duet/